I’m cycling through Old Town on a lush and warm early summer morning. The sign in front of me says, “Welcome to Indian Island. Home of the Penobscot Nation. Bingo 7 Nights a Week.” Right there, I think is the whole sad history of a complete people. I turn right, and cycle over the bridge and onto the island. The school is just beyond the clinic. It’s modern and pleasing to the eye. When I go in I see that Carol has put up signs everywhere in Penobscot. The signs are labels, really, to familiarize the students with the language of their people, a language that is teetering on the brink of extinction.
In the classroom I watch Carol work with the students. She has natural authority and a proud bearing. Her straight back and strong face give her a strength and dignity that belie the vulnerability and pain that she feels inside but only few have seen.
“I think it’s working,” she says, “they like the stories, and the acting it out.” “We all do,” I say, “that’s how we’re wired to learn, by doing, it’s universal. You watch, you follow, you do, you watch, you follow, you do. It was the same in medieval Europe and in ancient Japan, and with your forbears. You go hunting with your dad, or you help your mom. You follow, you watch, you do.” “Makes sense,” Carol says.
The phone rings and I pick it up. “I seen your white ass,” Carol says and I know she’s been drinking. “You have,” I say, not, “you did,” but Carol misses it and carries on, “on that bike of yours, up by Gilman Falls, like you were being chased by the devil.” “Is that who it was?” I say. Then Carol is crying and saying, “I don’t know if I can do it. They won’t listen. The Elders. The kids. I don’t know if they care.” “Carol,” I say, and I swing the door closed. “You can do it, Carol,” I say, because there would be no point saying she couldn’t and I know she looks to me for consistency. “I know,” she says, “but it’s hard.” And then she hangs up and I know I won’t see her for a while. But I know how she is and that her life goes in cycles and sooner or later she’ll drop by, because that what native people do. It’s a good thing. They drop by to check in.
Carol is sitting in my office. She’s given me a sweet grass braid. It’s beautiful, dry and long and carefully made. I take it and as I do, Carol steps forward and takes my forehead and pulls it down so it touches hers and then she steps back and says, “I’ve never kissed a whiteman before.” I want to ask what it was like and I’m feeling this feeling of being honored stereotyped at the same time, but Carol is my friend and we’ve worked together and I say, “That means a lot to me,” because it does mean a lot to me. And it does ‘mean a lot’, too.
“The elders don’t like what I’m doing,” Carol says, sitting in the chair in my office. “They don’t like the fact that you’re trying to preserve your language and culture?” I say, because I want her to know that’s what she’s doing, that really she is the one on whose shoulders this came down on whether she likes it or not. “They don’t think I can speak it properly, I mean well enough,” Carol looks up, “the elders are important, I can’t do what they don’t want me to do.” “OK,” I say, because I feel clear and practical about this, “so how many of the elders can speak Penobscot, I mean so they think in it and can dream in it and name flowers and the clouds that mean rain is coming?” Carol looks at me. The bearing she has in the classroom, the strength and authority isn’t there. I see a vulnerability, and fear, and a sadness. “One,” she says, “there’s a couple of others who speak it well but they don’t like to because they weren’t allowed to as kids and they feel ashamed.” “Ashamed?” I ask. “Look Carol, it’s you. It’s come to you and I’m going to tell you what I think. Language is organic, it’s never static, it’s always changing and being influenced, but once it’s gone it’s gone and when it goes it takes everything it new with it. The medicinal plant knowledge, the animal knowledge, the ways to make things and hunt things. You’re all they’ve got. You’re the one. It doesn’t matter if you can’t speak it perfectly, you’ll just have to borrow from other languages, or even invent. There are no rules, you just can’t let it die. The elders, I know. Really. The respect is important but sometimes, some things just have to be done.” I look at Carol, “I know, Chris, she says, I know, but it’s not easy.”
The phone rings just as I’m about to leave the office to cycle home and take my paddleboard down to the river, so I really don’t want to answer it, but something makes me. “You’re all the same, you white people,” Carol says, slurring slightly, “You’re just as bad as the rest of them.” “What?” I ask not surprised but suddenly I feel lucid, “Carol?” “You are, you’re just like the rest of them …” Carol says, trailing off into a silent moment, before I hear her snuffle, “Carol,” I say, “for me you’re a person, right, a person first, it doesn’t matter what else you might be, but for you I’ve always been a white man first, and then, maybe a person. Right?” Carol doesn’t say anything, “Are you there?” I ask and I hear a mumbled yes. “Where are you?” I ask. “In Acadia,” Carol says, “They brought me here. I was getting rowdy.” I sigh, “I’m scared,” Carol says, “I don’t know what’s going on.” It’d had been a while since Carol had dropped by. She’d gone quiet and I hadn’t been up to the school and hadn’t had the calls where I’d pick up the phone and without any introduction or transition, Carol would say, “I tried the TPR thing and it worked and we’re going to do it again, but I’ve got to do this assessment thing for the state,” and off we’d go and Carol would be excited and motivated and busy and then, it would all come crashing down. “Do you want me to come and get you?” I ask. “I don’t know,” Carol says, “I don’t care. Anymore.” “Carol,” I say, “You have to care.” I’m thinking about Carol, but also about the Penobscot language and all that Carol had done, the stories she’d got one of the elders to tell her and the plants she could now name and the medicinal properties they have. “I’m learnin’ so much,” she used to say, “It’s really excitin’.” And when she dropped by I’d get snatches of her past. The abusive husband, the kids, the traveling, the other tribes, the love she felt for the land and the sadness she felt for the loss of her culture. “My daughter’s coming,” Carol said, “I just needed to shout at someone, and I’ve shouted at everyone else, so I figured I’d call you.” “So you’re OK?” “No,” Carols says, “I don’t know what it is, Chris.”
Then I don’t hear from Carol for a long time, but I get SPAM emails about New Agey things and also conspiracy theories, and doomsday prophesies. I just delete them, and wonder. It’s summer, and come fall I don’t know if Carol is going to be teaching Penobscot or collecting stories or knowledge that she can teach and pass on. I call her but her number has been disconnected and things happen in my life and Carol becomes less present in my mind.
But later, as summer begins to loosen its grip and the air has started to change, I begin to think about Carol and the school and whether she will be teaching at the Indian Island School in the fall. As I’m thinking this I’m turning into Hannaford listening to John Butler, “All you want is what you can’t have. Be good, you can do better than that.” I’m pushing my cart down past the milk section when Carol appears in front of me with a cart and four young children. I recognize two, but the other two I haven’t seen before but they’re all dark and very beautiful and happy with Carol. I give Carol a big hug because I have for a long time.
“Hey Carol,” I said feeling happy to see her but deciding not to ask about teaching Penobscot and how things went after we spoke and I was just another white guy. Carol looks happy, I think, but something in her eye tells me that she has something to say, or knows something that I want to know but doesn’t want to tell me here. It’s just a feeling and it comes to me quickly and completely and then I ask, “So what’s new?” Carol smiles at her grandchildren and ruffles the hair of one, “Lookin’ after the grandkids,” she says, “I’m better now.” I know she means she’s stopped drinking and that’s what she’s saying, though she doesn’t say it, I know she also means that she’s not teaching anymore. I’m still happy to see Carol and I’m glad she’s stopped drinking and I know we won’t have the discussion about who is going to keep it all going. Who is it that will maintain the language and record as much as possible from the elders, the songs, the stories, the knowledge about weather, and plants, and animals. Right now, Carol being better seems very important, but we had spent a lot of time design classes for the school and the community center, and writing grants focusing on the preservation of heritage languages. The grandchildren are getting restless and it’s time for Carol to go and I tell her to drop by some time but she says it’s hard because of looking after the grandchildren. I see her smile, but I see the sadness, too. It’s because she’s not doing what only she could do, maintain that thread that connected the past to the future. The wheels of the cart begin to creak as Carol eases her way past the sour cream towards the ice-cream section. I’m left standing by my cart thinking of a recording Carol had made of an elder telling the story of two lovers, one a Penobscot and one Cherokee and how they had run off together as their families hadn’t allowed them to be together. It had reminded me of Romeo and Juliet. I knew the story but in Penobscot, though I couldn’t understand it, it took on a new power. I could feel the story unfurl and lead to its tragic climax. Misunderstanding and death.
Carol is ahead of me in the parking lot in a battered jeep. She turns right and I turn left, and as I’m driving down Bennoch Road I see an eagle making it’s way along the river, slowly and purposefully. I wonder what the word for eagle is in Penobscot and then I wonder how long it will be before there’s no one left that does know.
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